Northern Virginia is home to more data centers than anywhere else in the world and Blackwell says each data center draws about 30,000 kilowatts of power.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that in 2012, lighting for buildings, streets and highways in the U.S. used about 274 billion kilowatt hours.
He said earlier this month that the country's Energy Ministry would likely increase costs for Bitcoin miners to 7 cents for each kilowatt of electricity they use.